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Repair Costs Could Bring Down a Popular Pier

Park officials are considering shutting down Pier 40, the 15-acre structure that sits over the Hudson River at Houston Street.Credit
Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times

When it was created in the late 1990s, Hudson River Park seemed like a new genre of public space, a state-city hybrid built on and over the water, with continuing maintenance to be paid for by commercial development on a handful of piers.

For years, one of the biggest contributors to the park’s bottom line has been Pier 40, where parking fees have generated $5 million a year, nearly a third of its annual budget for routine maintenance.

But this year, with Pier 40’s roof falling in and the pilings underneath it deteriorating, the pier has turned into a drain on the park’s finances: fixing only a fraction of the roof would cost $6.2 million.

In recent weeks, the Hudson River Park Trust, which runs the park, has closed a stairwell, bathrooms and one of three fields because of worsening conditions.

Park officials are now talking about the possibility of shutting down Pier 40 entirely.

“The intent was for Pier 40 to be developed so that it would support the park, but now the park is supporting the pier,” said Madelyn Wils, president and chief executive of the Hudson River Park Trust. “Many board members have weighed in and said that we can’t put money that we don’t have into the pier.”

The loss of the pier, a 15-acre structure that juts over the Hudson River at Houston Street, would not only cut off a future revenue stream, it would also affect hundreds of sports teams currently using the fields there, and the drivers of 1,600 cars that park there.

The park, along five miles of the Hudson, draws millions of visitors a year on foot and bicycle to the West Side of Manhattan.

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Some state officials see the proposed shutdown as a tactic to pressure the community to change the character of the park.Credit
Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times

But its waterfront location has posed challenges, with aging structures subject to the battering of wind and water, and the trust has struggled all along to fulfill one of its key mandates — the need to be self-sustaining.

The main problem, park officials say, is that the legislation that originally created the park severely restricted commercial uses of the piers.

Pier 40 can only be used for retail and entertainment purposes, and, over the years, two development proposals have fallen through. Community opposition helped defeat the most recent plan, which called for a large retail complex and a theater housing Cirque du Soleil.

Some city and state officials say that the development options for the pier should be expanded to include housing, which could generate enough cash to pay for the repair of the pier’s pilings and roof, estimated to cost $125 million, as well as yearly revenue for routine maintenance. But a bill in Albany that would have permitted office and hotel space, though not housing, never came up for a vote in the last session.

Assemblyman Richard N. Gottfried, one of the authors of the original Hudson River Park Act and sponsor of the most recent bill, said that it did not go far enough to fix the pier’s ills and that he wanted to reintroduce the bill allowing housing, perhaps as early as December if a special session of the Legislature is called.

Currently, any developer on the pier would only get a 29-year lease, which Mr. Gottfried said was too short. His last bill would have lengthened the potential lease term to 49 years, which, he and others said, still might not be enough to attract a developer willing to tackle the pier’s infrastructure.

“The reason I think housing should be open to consideration is that it does appear to have the lowest traffic impact while also producing the most reliable and highest revenue stream,” Mr. Gottfried said. “So I think it really ought to be on the table.”

But building apartments on public land is hard. Brooklyn Bridge Park, which is still under development along the East River, is the best example of a park that relies on private housing to pay for its annual maintenance. But development there, though it is moving forward, has been met with community opposition.

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A construction worker in a space with a water-damaged ceiling.Credit
Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times

Deborah J. Glick, the assemblywoman whose district includes Pier 40, says that neighborhoods like Chelsea and TriBeCa, which abut the park, need more open space, not luxury housing.

She said that the original prohibitions against certain types of development in the park were the result of careful thinking and scores of community meetings.

“The statement by the trust that it’s considering a phased shutdown is really a tactic to pressure the community and elected representatives to adopt the suggested plan for residential development,” Ms. Glick said.

Rather than housing, which she said would change the character of the park, Ms. Glick said she would prefer to add office space as a permitted use at the pier, while also exploring pier work and a new park improvement district that would impose fees on nearby buildings. (The trust also supports those ideas.)

The city’s parks commissioner, Adrian Benepe, dismissed the idea that talking about a shutdown was a strategic ploy.

The pier’s challenges are so severe, he said, that a park improvement district, while potentially helpful with routine maintenance, would not cover the replacement of 3,600 steel pilings or the roof.

“I don’t think anyone is exaggerating the importance of what needs to happen,” said Mr. Benepe, a member of the trust’s board who supports the housing option. “We’re closing more and more of the parking on the pier, which is in need of immediate stabilization and long-term work. The hopeful thing is that the solution to these problems lies within reach and most people understand that some kind of compromise is needed.”

In the meantime, parents are starting to organize to save the pier and its playing fields. Daniel Miller, former president of Greenwich Village Little League, said many residents would support housing if it meant keeping spaces for soccer, baseball and lacrosse.

Under the law establishing the park, half of the pier must be set aside for recreation. “As a community, we have to be open to all options,” Mr. Miller said. “Let’s say a 20-story building goes up; maybe we could then get 75 percent of the pier’s footprint for fields. The greater the percentage of the pier we can have for our youth, the better.”

A version of this article appears in print on August 18, 2012, on page A15 of the New York edition with the headline: Repair Costs Could Bring Down a Popular Pier. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe